


Scry & Lie

by anonymous_sibyl



Category: Dresden Files - Butcher
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-02-09
Updated: 2008-02-09
Packaged: 2017-10-04 03:47:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anonymous_sibyl/pseuds/anonymous_sibyl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Michael, your seer is questioning my authority."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Scry & Lie

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place between "Proven Guilty" and "White Night."
> 
> This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/). None of the media or characters written about in my fanfiction belong to me and I make no profit from these works. 

"Your seer has a tramp stamp."

"Why, Harry," Michael began, in what I recognized as the same voice he used when my namesake, his four-year old son, tried to touch Daddy's holy sword, "you, of all people, should know better than to judge someone on outward appearance alone."

Okay, so, my jeans had seen better days and my coat wasn't so much a coat as it was an ichor and bodily fluids catcher, but there was no need to be cruel. Besides, I got that ichor all over me saving the world. Still, the official seer for the Knights of the Cross had a tattoo right in the center of the small of her back, and it wasn't exactly what you'd call a symbol of the God Michael served.

"She served one of the Sidhe." I couldn't tell if it was one of the nasty ones or one of the ones that ate the nasty ones for breakfast, but between the Sidhe and us lesser mortals that usually didn't matter.

"She was called. She answered."

"By you or the Sidhe?"

"Harry."

"Can you trust her?" I'd admit it, sometimes Michael's faith in people terrified me in that shaking down to your boots sort of way.

"I can trust her to See. Since that's all I need her to do, then things seem to be in harmony." He grinned at me. "Relax, Harry. Things happen as He wills."

I wasn't so sure He was overly thrilled with me--now or ever--so that didn't exactly fill me with the confidence it was intended to.

"Has Charity seen her?"

Michael turned his gaze on me and slowly blinked. "Why would my wife want to see her?"

"Tramp stamp," I stubbornly repeated. "Would she approve of that?"

"You _have_ met my daughter, Molly, haven't you?"

Okay, fine, I was desperate enough to drive the holy warrior to sarcasm. You can't trust anyone who's partnered with the Sidhe, it changes them, sometimes in ways they can't change back from. I brushed aside the thought that I'd begun to make a habit of working with the Sidhe myself. "Yes," I said, through gritted teeth. "I have met your daughter. But I didn't look."

He stroked the plastic case that held _Amoracchius_. "I know you didn't."

I didn't think he'd smite me with a sword named "Love" but I didn't want to take that chance. "She's a lovely young lady. Hard worker. Very…"

Michael laughed. "I also have met my daughter, Harry, and I know she's driving you crazy." His laughter faded and he turned momentarily serious. "How's her training coming along?"

"Good," I nodded. "Good. She's a pain in the ass, but she knows how serious this is."

"She's her mother's daughter."

I was way too smart to say anything about that.

"Shouldn't she be here, under your supervision?"

"She is." I pointed toward the front of the church. "I left her with Father Forthill. I think she's washing windows."

"Wax on, wax off," he murmured.

"Yep. Learning valuable life lessons through menial labor. It's the Wizardly Way."

The seer cleared her throat. "Are we ready?" She straightened, gripped her red-patterned top, and pulled it down to meet the top of her jeans. That had the effect of exposing more of her stunning cleavage, and yet another tattoo.

I elbowed Michael. "Sidhe. Plural. Two of them."

"One to enslave me, one to free me." She crossed her arms over her chest and stroked her fingertips over the mark she'd revealed. "Is there a problem?"

Michael cut me off with a gesture, leaving his arm in front of me as if to hold me back. "No."

"Yes." I ducked under his outstretched arm when he scowled at me and stupidly positioned myself between the man with the sword and the seer stamped 'property of the Sidhe.' "Yes there is. You don't get freed by Sidhe mark. You just get a different master."

She raised an eyebrow and aimed it in my direction. "Know a lot about it, do you?"

"Michael, your seer is questioning my authority." He sighed the sigh of the very put-upon, arcing his eyes heavenward, then closing them. I hated it when he did that. "You look like Charity," I hissed.

"We're taking a walk." He took my arm and steered me away from the seer. "Serena," he addressed her, "give us a moment. Harry has something he needs to get off his chest."

"And it isn't a Sidhe tattoo," I mumbled.

He waited until the door shut to speak. "Harry, you are aggravating the seer."

"Serena the Seer?" Please. Even I wasn't that cheesey and I had an ad in The Yellow Pages. "The Mistress of Alliteration in there has two Sidhe marks, Michael."

"She explained them."

"She's wrong." He started to say something and I spoke over him. "Michael, I know your God takes care of you, but she's wrong. So either she's been lied to or she's lying to us. And if she's lying to us--to you--then maybe she's still under the control of one or both of the Sidhe whose marks those are. And maybe she's a danger."

"And maybe," he said quietly, "she simply made a mistake or two along the way."

Ouch. For one of God's warriors, Michael played rough. "That cuts deeper than _Amoracchius_."

"Sometimes a small cut from Love is necessary so that you can see."

"From where I'm standing, it's you who can't see."

"Peace, Harry." He brushed his fingers across his sword before resting his hand on my arm. "Do you think He would have brought us here if not for a reason? If she is meant to See, she will See. If she is supposed to be stopped, we'll stop her." He squeezed my bicep once before putting his hand on the doorknob. "And if she needs help, well, who better than Chicago's finest wizard to help her?"

"Plate's kind of full right now, Michael." I gestured toward the front of the church. I could hear Molly's laughter floating back toward us as Father Forthill joined her in singing some popular song.

"There's always room for another at the table."

"Your table or mine? Because my table is booked solid, what with Molly, Mouse, and Mister. I'm just about out of table."

"He will provide."

"Well, does he provide beer, because I could use one."

The door cracked open to reveal one very annoyed seer tapping her foot impatiently on the wooden floor. "I have a mani-pedi in an hour, can we get on with this?"

"Of course," Michael said, easing his body between us. He gestured toward the table she'd set with the tools of her trade. "Please."

It was a garden variety scrying: chanting, incense, and a deep, black bowl. Michael got the information he needed and I got a heavy sense of the creeps each time Serena's tattoo reflected in the water before her.

She drew her fingers from her cleavage to her eyes. "I'm up here."

Michael, man of God that he is, hid his chuckling behind his hand. I glared at them both.

"You done?" I grunted.

"Yes, Harry, we are finished."

"Mani-pedi time," she said, waggling her fingers at me. "Carry the bowl, wizard, and help me to my car. Don't drop it."

I started to argue then figured better me than anyone else in that church, just in case I was right and she was a Sidhe killing machine. "You can carry your own incense."

Give her credit, she had a hell of an eyeroll. "Big, strong wizard."

"Sidhe bait."

She said only enough to order me around, telling me to place that bowl in bubble wrap, then securely in the trunk of her Honda. I touched every part of its lights hoping my mystic mojo would at the least knock one of them out and get her a ticket. Hey, I'm a wizard, not a saint, and she had pissed me off.

"Bye bye, Harry," she said, before closing the door. "You've been swell."

"I'm a gentlemen like that."

She winked at me, closing one eye slowly, as she shut the door and started the engine. "I know. Your godmother told me all about you. She misses you."

My godmother, the Leanandsidhe. I wondered if hers was the tramp stamp or the mark on Serena's cleavage. It was a question of aesthetics, mind, and perhaps an insight into dear old godmother's sexual proclivities, but the name of the Seer's current mistress was clear.

"She won't ever free you," I said.

"She already has. More than you'll ever know."

"Tricks and lies," I said, as she drove away. When I got bored with watching her taillights stutter off and on I noticed Michael standing in the doorway of the church, watching me. "You and your God owe me a beer."

He met and held my gaze. "Setting a new place at your table, Harry?"

It isn't easy being Chicago's finest wizard and official savior of all damsels in distress. Serena might need a place at my table or she might just want to slip poison in my cup, but either way dear old godmum was up to no good and I had to do something. "Shut up, Michael. Just shut up."

He laughed all the way to Mac's. Bastard.


End file.
